STATEMENT

FUNCTIONAL WORK

My work investigates relationships between human systems and the natural world, focusing on liminal spaces where built environments and ecological processes intersect. Through functional ceramic objects, I examine how material practice, visual culture, and land use shape understandings of place. Function operates not only as utility but as a research methodology—inviting sustained, embodied engagement that counters cultures of disposability.

Working in clay, a material historically associated with durability, repair, and daily ritual, I position ceramic vessels against contemporary logics of single-use consumption. By referencing historic forms such as bowls, jars, and storage vessels, my work engages lineages of making that predate industrialized production and foreground values of longevity, maintenance, and care. These forms operate as critiques of extractive material economies and as propositions for slower, more reciprocal modes of use.

Pattern functions as both narrative and analytical structure in my work. Informed by textile histories from Asia, Northern Europe, and Africa, I translate floral and geometric patterns into systems that map ecological and cultural relationships onto ceramic form. Surface imagery is drawn from sites where organic growth and human intervention coexist—grasslands interrupted by fencing, climbing plants overtaking utility structures, and seed pods collecting in urban infrastructures—revealing the persistence and determination of ecological processes within regulated landscapes.

The use of native and indigenous plant forms is central to this inquiry. These species, shaped by deep regional relationships, contrast with ornamental and invasive plantings associated with development and consumer landscaping. By foregrounding their forms, my work highlights adaptation, interdependence, and cyclical renewal while critiquing ecological and cultural disposability. Seed pods, often dismissed as debris, become symbols of resilience and futurity, carrying ecological continuity across disrupted terrain.

My research operates within frameworks of ecological materialism, craft history, and place-based inquiry. By embedding these investigations into functional objects, I collapse distinctions between art object and everyday use, proposing ceramics as a site for sustained interaction, environmental awareness, and critical reflection. My practice advocates for attentiveness to local ecologies and material histories as a means of fostering more ethical relationships between people, materials, and our environments.

VESSELS OF MEMORY

My vessels occupy an intentionally ambiguous space, situated between celebration and memorial. They function as containers not only in a physical sense, but as repositories for memory, loss, and affection. Like memory itself, these forms resist singular emotional readings; they are capable of holding joy and sorrow simultaneously. Each piece serves as a stand-in for moments I recall with fondness while knowing—regretfully—that they can never be fully revisited. In this way, the vessels operate as quiet acts of remembrance, acknowledging both presence and absence.

I incorporate natural objects that are deeply embedded in personal memory as decorative and structural elements, allowing material to act as a mnemonic device. By recontextualizing these organic forms, I return to specific places and moments that have shaped my understanding of home, movement, and belonging. The mimosa trees that lined the walkway of my childhood home, shedding their soft pink blossoms in early summer; the magnolia tree I climbed at my grandmother’s house; the cholla cactus skeletons punctuating the horizon during long runs in Santa Fe; and the tulip poplar leaves and seed pods gathered during my time in Tennessee all carry with them distinct sensory and emotional registers. These materials bear the traces of lived experience and mark formative chapters in my life.

Leaves, twigs, pods, and husks function as both ornament and archive. Their inclusion collapses distance between past and present, allowing memory to surface through tactile and visual recognition. While the narratives embedded in each vessel are personal, they are not intended to remain private. Instead, I view the work as an invitation—one that encourages viewers to locate their own experiences within the surface language of the piece. Familiar natural forms can trigger recollection, opening space for shared storytelling and emotional exchange.

Ultimately, my practice explores how material, memory, and place intersect, and how objects can act as conduits for connection. By foregrounding nature as a shared reference point, these vessels propose a network of collective remembering—one in which individual histories overlap and resonate. Through this exchange, the work affirms the capacity of objects to hold meaning beyond the self and underscores the role of art as a site for empathy, reflection, and communal experience.